


Second Chances

by Asphodelia



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Magic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28892076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asphodelia/pseuds/Asphodelia
Summary: Demetri doesn't believe in magic, but he is the proud owner of a new spell book. Why not mess around a bit?Can a spell bring back his best friend? And if Eli is Eli, then where is Hawk?
Relationships: Demetri & Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz, Demetri/Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz
Comments: 48
Kudos: 99





	1. Love Lost

_Interfectorem anguis_ : a spell for killing snakes. 

Obviously the snakes he was forced to deal with on a daily basis weren’t literal snakes – and he didn’t want to kill anybody – so that was no good. Not that Demetri believed in magic. He liked stories about mages and dragons, sure, but that was fantasy and in reality Demetri was a skeptic. He could tell the difference between wishful thinking and actual possibilities. 

His grandmother had sent him this book of ‘old family spells’ out of the blue, though, and it was proving entertaining to flip through. It was fun to think about going into school tomorrow and cursing Kyler with itchy bones or “Hawk” with baldness. It would be stupid to actually try anything like that – again, magic wasn’t real. Demetri was a nerd not an idiot – but what was life without daydreams?

According to the strange note his grandma had left inside her strange gift petty revenge spells probably wouldn’t be considered ‘worthy’ anyways. 

_My darling Demetri,  
To recover your sweetheart.  
Remember – magic is impossible for a petty heart, but nothing is impossible if your intentions are pure.  
Love,  
Nana_

Frankly, Demetri had a pretty petty heart, so even if magic were real this book would probably be useless to him. And he had no idea what his grandma meant about his ‘sweetheart’. He and Yasmin had just broken up (if a couple weeks of secret makeout sessions could be called ‘dating’), but his grandma had never even known they were together. Plus, while he did care about Yas, he wouldn’t call her his sweetheart. It had been amazing to have her take a second look at him never mind want to kiss him, but once the excitement of that had faded away they’d realized they were more attracted to each other as concepts than people. 

Maybe one of his cousins had gone through a bad breakup recently and his grandma had gotten them confused. 

Demetri yawned wide and let the open book rest on his face for a moment. He was already laying on his bed, he could probably just flick the light out and go to sleep, but it occurred to him that he’d looked up spells for snakes but not birds. And right now the worst snake was a bird.

That barely made sense, he really should just go to sleep, but he raised the book above his face again and kept flipping the pages.

 _Aves accersi:_ a spell for summoning birds. 

No thank you.

 _Deterret aves:_ a spell for keeping birds away.

Closer. 

There was no spell for turning asshole birds of prey back into rational, intelligent, humans who didn’t get caught up in stupid ideas about being ‘alpha’s and had good taste in tv and comics and laughed softly at your jokes and smiled at you like they thought you were wonderful and sometimes fell asleep on your shoulder during movie marathons…

That was probably a strange thing to look for. Demetri thought again that he should just get some sleep and that was the last thing he was aware of thinking about before his alarm was going off. He’d fallen asleep with the book still resting on his face. 

Groggily, Demetri groaned and reached for the snooze button. He could afford five minutes. He also reached above him to move the book since it wasn’t exactly comfortable, but then his squinting eyes caught sight of the words on the page.

_Amissa caritate_

Demetri didn’t know why this spell was catching his attention and he wasn’t awake enough yet to really absorb all of the information written about it on the page. Unlike the spells he’d looked up previously there were a few paragraphs devoted to this one. Only few key lines seemed to jump through the sleepy haze of his thoughts as his sat up to read them.

_…a second chance to talk to a person who has changed towards you…_  
…pulled from memory…  
…place your forehead to that of the subject… 

His alarm went off again and Demetri shook himself fully awake before closing the spell book and getting ready for school.

-

The morning passed normally enough. Everyday tasks like opening his locker and getting all of his things ready for class were back to being easy now that his arm had fully healed. He’d passed “Hawk” and the rest of the cobra cult in the hall that morning, but it had been crowded and nobody had said anything to him. Spikehead actually hadn’t targeted him too badly since the laser tag fight. He’d laugh and smirk and take a shot if an opportunity fell into his lap – he was still an ‘alpha’ jerk, essentially – but he didn’t come looking for him. 

A couple times, Demetri had caught himself wondering if that was because birdbrain felt guilty about what he’d done. 

On one hand, that was almost worse. If he didn’t care at all then it wouldn’t be personal, which inspired a cold kind of rage in Demetri. However, if Hawk did still have the capacity to give a shit about him and chose to ignore that? That meant someone who used to be one of the most important people in his life was choosing to throw their connection away every single time he went after him instead of just the once at the beginning of it all. 

On the other hand, it’d be nice if he were hurting himself too. 

On an intellectual level, Demetri was done with all of it. He actually had other friends now. He wasn’t just sitting around alone on Friday nights wishing Eli was there so someone would smile fondly at his commentary on whatever they were watching. Instead, he was training at Miyagi-Do or hanging out with his karate friends. And wishing Eli was there with him anyways. But that was a dumb emotional… thing. It wasn’t what he wanted logically. He could miss his best friend and fantasize about him still being around while acknowledging that they would never be friends again and the person he wanted near him didn’t even exist anymore. 

Fantasy from reality. Magic wasn’t real, and Eli was gone for good. In time he’d learn to stop wanting what he couldn’t have. 

“Hey, you got that cast off. Maybe next time I sign your face?” Demetri was barely three steps into the cafeteria before Kyler spotted him and called out. He probably wouldn’t do more than that for now, so Demetri planned to just ignore him and get in line for food. “Might be an improvement.”

A chorus of laughter. 

Demetri really did tell himself he was going to ignore Kyler completely, to keep his head down the way he’d done for years before, but he found himself looking over. There was a crowd of people laughing while Kyler mocked him and he had to see if Hawk was among them. 

He wasn’t. Because Demetri had just walked right into his back. 

“Ooooh shit, looks like you might get a new cast for me to sign.” Kyler snickered loudly from half-way across the room while Hawk turned on him with an unimpressed look. It was better than the constant smirk of a few weeks ago, but still a darker look than suited him. 

Hawk seemed to think for a moment and Demetri realized that if Kyler and the other Cobras weren’t paying attention he’d probably just glare and then turn back around. But they were paying attention and he didn’t seem capable of backing down while his ‘friends’ were invested in what he did. 

So, Hawk was stepping forwards with passionless murder in his eyes and Demetri was stepping back and franticly trying to puzzle out his next move. He could always turn tail and run. Hawk was threatening him for show right now so he probably wouldn’t give chase. It was the obvious answer. But Demetri didn’t want to do that. He was so sick of running away from this monster wearing his best friend’s face. 

If Sam or someone showed up to back him up Hawk might settle for just insulting him. This wasn’t worth starting a whole big brawl over, even if Kyler and the cobras were watching… But a quick glance around showed no Sam in the cafeteria. 

He could defend himself. Demetri knew he wasn’t a top tier fighter like Hawk was, but he was improving all the time and he’d venture to say that his defense was good enough to protect him from a half-hearted cafeteria assault. Hawk wouldn’t want to make a big thing of it, after all, just rough him up a little while no teachers were watching. Blocking a couple punches should be enough. Unless Hawk got embarrassed and went from performative anger to real anger. 

For about the millionth time over the past few months Demetri found himself contemplating just how hellish this all was. It was so much easier to tell himself he had other friends now and needed to just write Eli off and stop caring when he wasn’t staring him down. Facing him like this Demetri just wanted to shake him and yell at him to look at his life and what he’d become, what he’d done to them. What he was doing every day to someone he was supposed to be friends with for life. But getting through to him wasn’t possible anymore, and any attempt at it would end badly. 

Demetri decided on swallowing his pride and running – he really needed to get a handle on this spine Miyagi-Do was instilling in him, it wasn’t healthy – but the back of his legs hit a table before he could. Hawk was between him and the cafeteria door now. Running wasn’t an option. He’d have to defend and hope things didn’t escalate. 

He wished yet again that he could have just one real, honest, conversation with Eli. The person he used to be would understand the wrongness of this. If he could just remind Hawk of who he was supposed to be and make him stop…

Because Demetri didn’t hate the dead-eyed boy winding up to strike him. He told himself he did, most of the time. He definitely wished he could. But every time they faced off Demetri had to confront the fact that when he looked at Hawk he still saw Eli, and he could never hate Eli. 

Hawk threw the punch. Demetri blocked it. And then Demetri did something desperate and illogical. Something that was not at all becoming of a skeptic who didn’t believe in magic. He grabbed Hawk’s arm to hold his hand out of the way and struck forward with his head, crashing his forehead into Hawk’s in a headbutt and hissing “ _Amissa caritate_.”

It hadn’t been a plan. Sure, he’d had thoughts through the morning about how nice it would be if he could just use a spell like that to re-set Hawk back to when he was Eli, but he hadn’t seriously considered casting a spell on him. Because magic wasn’t real. In the moment he’d felt pushed to do _something_ , though. Something beyond what either of them were expecting. Something to shake up this bleak new status quo. 

He realized it was a mistake as soon as he did it. His head hurt like hell, probably worse than Hawk’s did. And Hawk had stumbled back, but he was still on his feet. He’d be snarling and attacking with a lot more bloodthirst any second…

Except he wasn’t. He was just standing there blinking and rubbing his head. 

“Demetri?” Hawk looked at him like he was confused. Then, his blue eyes widened in concern and he stepped forwards. His voice was quiet and unsure and not at all Hawk-like. “What happened? Are you alright?”

“So far so good…” Demetri trailed off, shuffling to the side before he could be trapped again between Hawk and the table. Hawk was acting weird but Demetri wasn’t going to jump to a conclusion like ‘magic is real and I fixed him’. 

Hawk looked honestly hurt that Demetri was trying to get away from him and Demetri let himself think that maybe the headbutt had caused some kind of memory loss. 

He didn’t get to ask any diagnostic questions because while he’d been paying attention to Hawk, Kyler had come up behind him. He grabbed him and restrained his arms. Hawk had an open shot at his stomach or face. He wasn’t taking it. He looked terrified. He looked behind him in a panic like he thought Kyler had an ally there cornering both of them. 

Whether it was memory loss or magic, this was definitely… “Eli!”

Demetri’s heart leapt higher than he thought it capable of. He wasn’t a particularly huggy person but he would have been hugging the life out of his best friend if his arms weren’t still restrained. 

“Yo Hawk, you gonna take the shot or what?” Kyler was getting impatient. Eli had no idea Kyler was talking to him. 

“D-don’t…” Eli stuttered out, trying to stand up for him when it was obvious he just wanted to run away or melt into the floor. 

Kyler was going to catch on pretty fast that “Hawk” was back to being someone he could push around if this whole situation didn’t get cut off. 

Demetri took a centering breath and kicked Kyler as hard as he could in the shin. The bully flinched in pain and surprise – something he may not have done if he wasn’t busy trying to figure out what was wrong with the other cobra – and Demetri spun out of his hold and landed a kick to his stomach. 

When he looked back Eli he was staring at him with absolute awe. There was no time to soak that in, though. 

“Chase me!” He whispered harshly as he ran by Eli and out of the cafeteria. Hopefully it would look to Kyler like Hawk was hunting him down.

-

“I’m just saying, ‘Red Robin’? Tim’s supposed to be the smart one and he comes up with ‘Red Robin’?” What was Demetri going on about? Was that loser really trying to talk to him about comics right now? Were the headbutt and the weird words some kind of Batman reference? That he didn't get? 

“Shut up with the nerd shit!” Hawk turned to face Demetri (hadn’t he already been facing him?) and advanced. He hadn’t wanted to make too big a thing of his ex-friend bumping into him, but if he was going to mock him then they had a bigger problem. 

Demetri looked away from where he’d been washing his hands (they were in the bathroom?), stared for a moment, and then actually laughed before walking to the hand dryer. 

“Yeah, Tim Drake is a nerd with a dumb alias, but there’s no need to be mad about it.” Demetri wasn’t intimidated at all. When he looked back at Hawk he actually seemed a bit worried. “Are you… okay? You seem on edge.” 

Hawk looked around, feeling disoriented and mildly dizzy as he realized they were definitely in the bathroom, not the cafeteria. What was going on? 

Then, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Brown hair without a trace of spikiness. A plain green t-shirt. Skinny arms with zero muscle definition hanging at his sides. A dumb, lost, expression on an ugly scarred face with nothing to distract from it. He was… 

“Eli? Hey buddy, come on, what’s wrong?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it'd be fun to make our boys see things a bit differently by using time travel as a tool to build perspective. Let me know what you think!


	2. Reunited

“Eli? Hey buddy, come on, what’s wrong?” 

Demetri was next to him, a gentle hand on his shoulder and a concerned look on his face. 

Hawk pulled away harshly and left the bathroom. He walked fast, but he didn’t run. Running away wasn’t something he did anymore. Demetri caught up to him quickly, his long limbs making it easy despite having followed a few moments after. His voice when he spoke was baffled. “Did I do something to... upset you?”

Hawk didn’t answer. He didn’t understand what was happening. His heart was beating too fast. His breath was too quick and shallow. He couldn’t stop it. He didn’t know how he’d changed locations, or why Demetri was acting like they weren’t enemies, or why all of the work he’d put into changing himself into someone who wasn’t a pathetic loser had evaporated. Was this a dream? Some kind of prank? Had Demetri knocked him out and changed his hair? That wouldn’t explain how out of shape he was. But maybe that had just been his eyes playing tricks on him. 

Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more this had to be some kind of sick prank. This couldn’t be real.

“What the fuck did you do?” Demetri was still insisting on walking with him so grabbing him by the shirt and shoving him into the lockers was easy. 

“What is wrong with you? Get your hands off me!” Demetri grabbed at his wrists and tried to pry him off. He shouldn’t have been able to. At first Hawk kept pushing the taller boy into the lockers and clutching at his clothing, but as soon as Demetri managed to make a bit of progress and get one of his hands open Hawk felt himself give up. Because he realized Demetri was going to win. Because he hadn’t been seeing things in that mirror: he was weak. 

This wasn’t a prank. It was real. He’d lost it all. 

“Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.” Demetri had pulled his hands off his shirt and stood forward from where he’d been shoved, but he hadn’t let his hands go or tried to get away. He was just standing there staring at him now. Why? Was he going to gloat?

Demetri released one of his hands so he could wipe at his face and Hawk was disgusted to realize he was crying. He hadn’t cried since… well, since he’d looked like this. Not really. When he’d called himself ‘Eli’ he’d cried ridiculously easily. He tried to do it when he was alone as much as he could so the few people in his life wouldn’t think he was as fragile as he knew he was. And because as supportive as Demetri had always been, he could still be awkward about things like that. When they’d been best friends he’d never wanted to make the other boy feel like he had to take care of him. Watching him flounder for how to deal with it was worse than crying in the first place. 

Demetri wasn’t floundering now, though. He was pulling Hawk to himself and wrapping his arms around him, petting his hair and shushing him gently. Hawk remembered a conversation they’d had near the beginning of the summer before Miguel had transferred to their school. He’d been upset over something stupid, as always. A comment Counselor Blatt had made about how he was such a sweet boy and how it was wonderful that he didn’t feel the need to try at all to fit in, as if he wasn’t constantly doing his best to disappear. ‘I can tell you just don’t care at all how the other kids see you and that’s really for the best’. He’d ignored it for a couple days past the end of semester and it had festered – what did that mean? Was there some obvious way he was seen she was glad he didn’t know about? – until he’d felt himself starting to tear up while he and Demetri were playing video games. He’d left early to avoid bawling his eyes out in front of his friend. The next day Demetri had told him he didn’t need to do that because he wanted to be there for him, if Eli didn’t mind.

“Is this okay?” Demetri whispered into his hair, as if that conversation were recent and they hadn’t been enemies for months. That’s when Hawk realized Demetri really must believe that was the case or he’d never be trying to comfort him. Right now, Demetri didn’t hate him. Hawk sobbed.

“Tell me if I’m making things worse.”

He wanted to push him away. Even if Demetri wasn’t aware right now of everything that Hawk had done, of the fact that they were enemies, Hawk still knew and he shouldn’t let himself be this weak. Letting himself cry over nothing while the enemy _petted_ him…But then, rationally, losing everything that had given you any value wasn’t nothing. Hawk found himself frozen, neither pulling away from Demetri or responding to him in any way. 

“Sorry, I know I’m no good at…” Demetri didn’t finish the sentence, he just stepped away and gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder. Hawk mentally berated himself for missing the contact. 

The hall was completely empty – impossibly empty for lunch hour, he must have been knocked out for a while – so at least there’d been nobody but Demetri around to see his little episode. He also seemed to have stopped crying, so at least now he could start getting to the bottom of what was going on. Demetri seemed to have a similar thought. 

“So, do you want to, I don’t know, talk about why you’re suddenly attacking me? But then instead of me being upset, you’re upset?” Demetri was snarking off because he was Demetri, but there was no actual accusation in his tone. He was worried, shifting his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot and looking like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his arms. Like maybe he wanted to still be holding him. 

“No.” Hawk turned and kept on walking towards the front of the school. He couldn’t finish the school day looking like this. Skipping class was something he’d never done before this year, but it wasn’t that uncommon for him anymore. He wasn’t failing anything and he was smart enough to know how much he could miss and then still pass his tests with some cramming.

“Yeah, no to that 'no'.” Demetri was still following him. 

“Just go to class or something. I’ve got things I need to deal with.” 

“Clearly.” Hawk kept facing forward as he walked, but he didn’t have to look to know from the tone that Demetri was rolling his eyes. “And what class? We’re done for the day.”

There was a clock at the end of the hall right in front of them that said it was one thirty. 

Hawk stopped again, hit with a fresh wave of confusion. He must have been wearing that dumb lost look again because when he looked at Demetri the obvious annoyance on his face melted away again. 

“We had day camp this morning and it’s in the school building, but it only lasts half the day. Regular school won’t start for two more weeks.” Demetri explained slowly, realizing he had to although clearly still confused as to why. 

He and Demetri had gone to coding camp at the school weekday mornings the August before they’d met Miguel. If they were at coding camp now then that meant it was still a good month or so before Cobra Kai even existed. 

Of course, all of this would mean he’d actually gone back in time, which was impossible. 

Although, if this was some sort of elaborate set up then it was nearly impossibly detailed. Thinking back on what Demetri had been saying when he first found himself in the bathroom, he even remembered that they’d been re-reading a bunch of Batman and Batman adjacent comics that August and Demetri had gotten hung up on Tim Drake’s alias. He’d mentioned it multiple times. Hawk remembered smiling at how irritating he seemed to find it and reminding him that Tim had had to give up being Robin and pick a new alias pretty suddenly. 

He remembered long afternoons at Demetri’s house where they’d just read together for hours. Demetri loved to read comics out loud and do dramatic voices, and he could usually persuade him to join in even though Eli had never felt like he was any good at it and found it kind of embarrassing. It was always worth it, though, to let go and laugh with his best friend. It was… not the kind of memory Hawk let himself fixate on anymore. 

The point was, all signs were pointing to him having gone back in time. Demetri would be the only person who’d know these kinds of details about what they’d been doing the summer before karate hit their school, and Hawk had already accepted that he didn’t know what was going on. He’d need a bit more confirmation – were his tattoos gone? – before he accepted it because the idea was insane, but it seemed like he’d either time traveled or he was dreaming. 

“Okay, how about we go back to my place. Eat some lunch. Watch a movie. Then we’ll talk when you’re feeling more… yourself.” 

Spending the afternoon just hanging out with Demetri like he used to do every day felt wrong. That wasn’t something he was allowed to have anymore. He’d given it up for a reason and he had no regrets. If he went it’d just be hours of nerd shit and pretending to be a loser who still enjoyed nerd shit, with a side of Demetri’s obnoxious, continuous, commentary on everything. He’d grown beyond that kind of thing. He didn’t miss it. He wasn’t weak enough to indulge in it.

But if this was a dream then that didn’t matter. 

“Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

-

Demetri rounded a corner and was glad to see the hall in front of him empty. Good. He could stop running and they could talk. He could make sure he wasn’t imagining things in the cafeteria. And if he wasn’t then he was really going to get to talk to Eli again. 

Demetri slowed and turned with a wide smile on his face only to flinch when he saw the spikey-headed boy face-planting into the ground. Sam had come out of nowhere (well, probably the computer lab) and tripped him with a low kick. 

“Bit harder to be a bully when it’s two on one. Better get back to your little gang.” Sam was standing over the boy she thought was “Hawk” with a triumphant look on her face. Any other day Demetri would have been grateful for the turned tables and delighted to mock their foe as he shot them dirty looks and pretended he wasn’t scampering off. Today was obviously different. 

Eli peeled his face off of the linoleum and looked between them with absolute confusion written in his wide blue eyes. He started to stand, but he had his body turned in a way that made it clear he was going to head over to Demetri so Sam put herself between them protectively. Demetri still hadn’t figured out how to address the feeling of responsibility she had for what had happened to him. 

“It’s fine. I actually told him to chase me just now.” Demetri explained as he walked around Sam to help Eli to his feet. He wasn’t sure if he should tell her what was going on or not, particularly because he wasn’t sure himself what was going on and the potential explanations he had didn't sound very grounded in reality. She was probably going to need some kind of explanation, though.

“Why would you tell him to chase you?” Sam relaxed from the fighting stance she’d taken previously and narrowed her eyes at how close to him Eli was staying even after he was on his feet. 

“We need to talk, and him chasing me out of the cafeteria is pretty commonplace now so it was a good cover.” 

“Why would I chase you out of the cafeteria?” Eli half-mumbled, fidgeting with the long sleeves of Hawk’s punk-looking athletic-wear top. “I mean, except that you said to just now.”

Eli reached up to run a nervous hand through his hair and froze when it hit the mohawk. Then he tried again. Then he ducked down in a mild panic and looked up like he thought something had been hovering above him. Poor guy… Although, there was a level on which it was satisfying to see ‘Hawk’ weirded out by his own hairdo. 

Also, Sam was going to need a better explanation than ‘we had to talk’ after that display. 

“Okay, first off.” He turned to Eli and grabbed his shoulders, guiding him to stand up straight again. “You’re okay. You’re safe. You just have really stupid hair now. I can’t wait to show you.” 

“Secondly,” He turned to Sam while Eli raised his hands to trace the outline of his hair. “He hit his head pretty hard and I think he’s having a memory issue.” 

“What kind of memory issue?” Sam sounded hesitant, but wasn’t rejecting the idea outright. 

“Hawk.” Eli kept trying to figure out the mess of product on his head, too curious to be paying much attention.

“Hey Hawk.” Nothing.

“Eli.”

“Yes, sorry, um, I think I need a mirror.”

“That kind of memory problem.” 

Sam’s eyes widened a bit. “You don’t remember anything?”

“I’m not really sure what you mean by ‘anything’? I don’t know why you just kicked me.” Eli looked worried for a moment like maybe he just reminded Sam she wanted to kick him. 

“Okay…” Sam looked skeptical, but not like she was going to start insisting Hawk was the enemy. Good. With a heavy sigh she turned her attention back to Demetri. “I don’t know what this is. He could be faking, and even if he’s not it could all just come back to him suddenly.”

Demetri’s joy over having Eli back dimmed at the thought that maybe he was just being set up to lose him again. But even so…

“I still just… need to talk to him. Alone.” 

Sam was very obviously not a fan of that idea, and she looked like she was going to argue for a moment, but then she shook her head. “If this is fake you’re going to pay.” 

There was a clear opening there for a smug comment about how Miyagi-Do wasn’t supposed to teach revenge and ‘Hawk’ not taking it was pretty decent evidence that he wasn’t Hawk. To Demetri. Sam still gave him the stink eye before flashing Demetri a thin ‘this is a bad idea but I get that it’s important to you’ kind of smile and taking her leave. 

“We have so much to go over.” Demetri patted Eli’s shoulder. He looked just as confused and worried as he had this entire time and he was owed so many explanations (that Demetri may or may not give in full – he may be better off not knowing certain things). “But first…”

He pulled Eli in tight and wondered why he’d ever felt awkward about hugs. It was a ridiculous thought, but in that moment having Eli in his arms felt like everything he’d wanted for months. Maybe longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my outline this chapter is referenced as 'hugs'.


	3. Redo

Having Eli pressed this close to him, hesitantly raising his arms to return the embrace, made Demetri’s heart beat harder than he thought was probably healthy. He hadn’t thought he’d ever be this close to his friend again without the reason being violent. 

“Um, Demetri? Why are… Not that this isn’t nice, but I mean…” Demetri supposed it would be weird to have someone you knew was awkward about things like hugging suddenly clinging to you. 

“Right, sorry buddy.” 

Demetri pulled away, just in time for a group of girls in their year to walk by and shoot them curious looks for standing so close together. There probably would have been rumors about it if they’d walked by any earlier. Demetri was going to have to be careful about how he managed this. Getting Eli out of Hawk’s obligations to Cobra Kai would need to be done delicately; he didn’t even know right now if Miyagi-Do would be on board with having his back if the other snakes decided he was a traitor. 

For now, though, the important thing was to get Eli somewhat caught up so he didn’t turn to stone if Kyler tried to give him one of those back-pat half-hug ‘bro’ things. 

Honestly, Demetri didn’t want to let a situation like that even be a possibility. Part of him wanted to pick Eli up and run them both into some kind of witness protection situation where they could start new lives and he’d never have to worry about his sweet, sensitive, friend either being crushed by this Darwinian life he’d built himself or re-adapting to survive it. Not that he couldn’t just suddenly remember anyways, Demetri still couldn’t be sure of what had happened…

Anyways, if there was even the possibility that Eli was back for good, Demetri had to prepare him for what that meant. He led the other boy up to the second floor bathroom, near the science labs. It was the one farthest from the cafeteria or other places, like the theater or computer labs, where people spent their lunch period and thus the most likely to be empty. Once they were inside, Demetri pushed a trash can in front of the door. 

“Brace yourself. It’s probably not as bad as you’re thinking, but it’s pretty bad.”

“Why are you so…excited?”

“I’m not excited.” But Demetri realized he was probably smiling a bit too wide for that to be convincing. Honestly, he had hated Hawk’s whole look from the second that first glob of gel had touched his hair and he couldn’t wait to finally commiserate with Eli over it all. 

“…Oh.” Eli had turned to look at himself in the mirror and was frozen. Or at least his body was. His eyes flicked over his reflection rapidly for a moment. Then he moved in closer to get a better look at his hair, turning his head to see it from the side and… smiling. A small, real, smile that Demetri had missed so much and wanted to savor except -

“I kind of like it.” 

What?

“Seriously? You look like a firetruck with a dorsal fin.”

The little smile that had appeared on Eli’s face faded and he shrugged, looking back at Demetri with this hesitant, fragile, look that Demetri…actually hadn’t missed at all because it meant his friend was worried over some perceived slight or rejection (often real, but not always). “I mean, it’s kind of an aggressive colour, but it… you don’t think it’s even a little...” Eli trailed off. When they were younger he hadn’t been as hesitant about asserting himself around Demetri as everyone else and he’d forgotten that had changed at some point pre-Hawk. He still managed to look hopeful when he found the word he was looking for, though. “…cool?”

Demetri honestly hated the hairdo, but he didn’t have it in him to crush the hope in his friend’s face. “I guess I just have some bad associations with it.”

In hindsight, it had been dumb to think Eli wouldn’t like the hairdo. He had been the one to pick it, once upon a time. It’s not like he started acting like a jerk first and the thing spontaneously sprouted from his head. 

“Anyways, aren’t you wondering how that monument to gel and peroxide got there?”

It seemed like Eli had forgotten that part momentarily because his eyes filled with worry again and he nodded. Demetri didn’t like seeing him out of sorts, but he did miss how expressive he used to be. Eli was always quiet, but Demetri always used to be able to tell what he was thinking. 

“Okay, to start off, what’s the last thing you remember before the cafeteria?”

“We finished camp for the day. We were talking about Robins. School shouldn’t start for two weeks… Did I lose two weeks?”

“Bit over a year.” Demetri decided to just rip the bandaid. 

“O-oh.” Eli raised his arms in a gesture that looked more like hugging himself than crossing them. Demetri wondered if he should hug him again, but remembered that he seemed hesitant about it in the hall. Once – early in the summer this Eli was from – he had told his friend he knew he was awkward about emotions but that he wanted to try harder for him. He’d noticed the way Eli had started avoiding him when he was upset and he didn’t want that. He wanted to be the person who supported him and held him while he cried and made him feel like it was going to be alright… not that he’d laid it out in that much detail for Eli. But he’d definitely said he wanted to be there for him and that he shouldn’t be embarrassed. 

But Eli had never taken him up on that. Maybe it was just that it had been summer and all of the things that usually weighed on him happened at school, but even when school started and Demetri could see his friend struggling he never came to him. Maybe he was embarrassed anyways, or maybe he thought Demetri would be too weird about it and make things worse. 

He’d had him in his arms one time, but that had been different. Better because Eli hadn’t been sad, but also meaningless because as much as he’d enjoyed it he knew Eli only allowed it because it was convenient. They’d both been half-asleep after a movie marathon and Eli didn’t so much want to be held as need to be for them to both fit comfortably on his tiny basement sofa. They’d both just been too lazy to move. They’d never talked about it, so Demetri assumed Eli was embarrassed by that too.

And then he’d been Hawk and Hawk wasn’t someone who wanted or needed hugs. If Demetri ever tried to put his arms around him outside the context of a fight he’d probably scream like an anime character powering up and knock him back with the force of his chi.

And now he was imagining the mohawk golden.

Point was, he’d missed his chance. But now maybe he had a new chance. He could be the friend he’d wanted to be before. Helping Eli through this transition was a good place to start. He wasn’t going to dump everything on him right now, just enough that he wasn’t totally lost. 

“So, a bit less than a year ago you started taking karate…”

-

Hawk was starting to doubt this was a dream. If it was a dream he was remembering Godzilla: Final Wars way too perfectly. Or maybe his subconscious was just filling in what he didn’t remember with whatever – it was a pretty weird movie. Demetri hadn’t seen it before because this was apparently the first time they’d watched it – a fact that lined up with the insane idea that he’d traveled back to the summer before they met Miguel, because that was when they’d watched it together. Hawk was slowly starting to accept that he wasn’t going to just wake up any time soon, but time travel?

Maybe none of it was real. Maybe he’d never been anything but this pathetic nerd who could barely look anyone in the eye. Miguel, Cobra Kai, the whole karate war – maybe that had been the dream?

No. He knew who he was. That had all been real, but this was too. The worn-down faux leather of Demetri’s tiny basement sofa was as soft as ever, the first pizza bite he’d thrown in his mouth a few minutes ago had burned him a bit, and his left leg was figuratively on fire. The sofa was just big enough that they didn’t have to be touching, if they each stuck to their own side, but Demetri had one leg crossed over the other in Hawk’s direction and his foot was touching his leg. Hawk wanted to tell him to move further to his side or move his foot, but Demetri already thought he was acting weird. At this point in their acquaintance it would have been totally normal for neither of them to worry too much about personal space while they were hanging out like this. 

The best example of how embarrassingly touchy-feely things had gotten with Demetri – The Incident, as Hawk thought of it – had happened… well, if Hawk really had time traveled and was when he thought he was, it would have happened less than a week ago. 

They’d marathoned old Godzilla movies late into the night and he’d fallen asleep on Demetri’s shoulder. A weak display and not at all a normal thing to do with your friend, he could see that now, but at the time it had been a fairly regular occurrence. Normally, though, he’d wake up and they’d go upstairs. He’d spend the night on his air mattress. On this particular night, however, he had vague memories of being slightly chilly and curling into the comforting warmth he was already pressed against. This had resulted in him leaning heavily on Demetri with his face buried in his neck and his knees turned over the other boy’s lap. He hadn’t been fully awake for this part, but he knew it because of how he’d woken up a moment later. A deep, kind, chuckle had roused him a bit and then an arm under his knees had brought him to a sleepy awareness of what was happening.

Demetri had shifted them so Eli was sitting completely in his lap, lanky arms winding around his thin waist and back.

“Is this alright?” The question had been whispered softly into his ear. And it had been alright. Everything had been alright. He’d nodded against Demetri’s throat and snuggled in, clinging to his friend and falling back asleep with a smile on his face and long fingers running through his hair. 

In the morning he’d woken up first and realized – even as desperate little Eli he’d realized – that falling asleep in your friend’s lap was strange. He hadn’t actually felt strange about it, hadn’t suddenly snapped into the realization that that warm, safe, feeling was just a lure into weakness and passivity (that would come quite a bit later), but he’d known from an objective standpoint that it was strange and had worried Demetri would be annoyed or weirded out. He’d tried to get up before Demetri woke up, but his position and general gracelessness had made that difficult. 

Demetri woke up just as Eli had managed to slide his bum off his lap and onto the sofa, falling slightly back so he was propped up on his elbows. Demetri had looked confused for a moment, when he first woke and found his arms empty, but then he’d looked over and their eyes had met. The warm, safe, feeling was back and mixed with something electric. Demetri had leaned slightly over him and cupped his face.

He started to open his mouth. He was going to ask if he could kiss him. Eli was going to say yes. 

Demetri's mom called downstairs asking if they wanted pancakes for breakfast. 

So. Disaster averted. He only had to live in fear of the day Demetri did a stand up routine about the night he’d sat in his lap like a pet. Or a whore. The Demetri in his time at least couldn’t brag about having Eli desperate underneath him. 

If he’d even interpreted the situation correctly. He remembered thinking maybe something was about to happen and then still waiting for it for weeks until they were back at school and Demetri was back to ‘admiring the rich girl’s table from afar’ and saying he wanted Yasmin to spit in his face. So maybe - probably - Demetri had never wanted him and Eli had just been needy enough to imagine it. 

Still, Demetri was almost definitely going to taunt him with ‘that time we cuddled’ in front of an audience at some point. 

Or, maybe he wasn’t, because if Hawk had really gone back in time then that meant he could change things. 

Demetri didn’t hate him yet. He hadn’t done anything to make him hate him yet. He could rewrite things so he never would. If he could make it so they stayed friends, so Demetri stayed in Cobra Kai with him, was that something he even wanted to do? He turned to look at the boy sitting next to him: dark hair, dark eyes, laughing at the ridiculous movie and looking completely care free. Looking like home. 

It was weak to want something like that. But he did. And Sensei Kreese was always saying how the Cobras were all in it together: he was allowed to have allies. The Demetri in his time was an enemy and wanting peace with him was foolish. There was no such thing as peace. But this Demetri wasn’t an enemy. He was… a potential recruit. 

Hawk could make it so Demetri wouldn’t scoff at the first thing to ever make him feel confident and good about himself. He’d never make fun of Hawk’s most embarrassing secrets to a room full of everyone they knew. 

Hawk would never have to hear that stunned voice asking if he’d really hurt him, never have to feel the dark thing coiled inside him hissing ‘yes’. 

He’d never break his arm.

Things would never be shattered beyond what Hawk could fix.

“I’m from the future.” Hawk said suddenly. This was either a dream where there’d be no consequences or a second chance to make everything right. If it was the later he wanted to get on top of things now. 

Demetri laughed and looked at him oddly. “Okay, you’re going to have to be a bit more specific with the reference.” 

“It’s not a reference. I’m from the future.” Demetri’s eyebrows were trying to escape his face, but he still paused the movie and turned to give him his full attention. 

“So, we’re at the talking part, huh? Does it have to be in metaphors?” 

“Not a metaphor either. Listen, there’s a war coming. We have to be ready.” 

“Right. Robots or zombies?” 

“Karate.”

Demetri didn’t believe him, but that was fine. He’d prove it to him somehow, and then they could train. They’d be ready when the time came. Stronger. And they’d still be together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fandom around this ship is growing so much! There's a whole bunch of stuff I can't wait to read, but I've been forcing myself to wait anyways because I needed to get this chapter done! Now I can read it all! It's an exciting time~
> 
> EDIT: In case anyone skims through this more than once, you're not imagining things: I did remove a paragraph I was feeling weird about a couple hours after posting that didn't really affect the story.


	4. Magic is Dumb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a spoiler for the first Life is Strange game in this chapter, just fyi.

Demetri started to tell Eli an abbreviated version of the time he’d ‘lost’ (he seemed to believe, like Sam did, that he was just having a memory issue and Demetri didn’t really know for sure that wasn’t it so he wasn’t going to correct him). He started off by telling him that when school started they’d made a new friend, Miguel. 

“What’s he like? Is he still our friend now?” Eli had been adorably excited to learn they’d made a new friend. Demetri had forced a smile and promised he’d meet Miguel soon. He didn’t want to derail the story and ruin Eli’s excitement by telling him he wasn’t currently speaking to this new friend he was so happy to have. 

After that Demetri had gone on to explain that Miguel had started taking karate and they’d joined too after a while. “The sensei was this aggro caveman who outright said he wouldn’t stop making fun of you. I quit.”

“Oh. So, what did we do after we quit?” Eli blinked, confused, and it really shouldn’t have been as cute as it was. Seriously. Demetri didn’t remember thinking his best friend was ‘cute’ every time he emoted before but now he literally wanted to squeeze him every time he smiled or frowned or fidgeted with his shirt sleeves. Maybe it was just that he hadn’t projected anything besides anger or fake tough guy bullshit in so long that made all his expressions cute now. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of Eli’s mannerisms and Hawk’s style. Maybe he had always felt that Eli was cute and just hadn’t bothered taking the time to think on it. “It seemed like you knew karate in the cafeteria…” 

Eli was looking at him in awe again, like he had in the cafeteria, and this time Demetri did take a moment to soak that in. Just knowing that Eli liked him again and didn’t see him as some loser he used to waste his time with was amazing. Having him look at him like that? Demetri was having trouble thinking of anything better. He almost didn’t want to continue the story, but he knew he had to.

“I do, but I learned somewhere else. Uhh…” This was where things got awkward. “We didn’t learn together. You stayed at Cobra Kai – the aggro caveman’s dojo.”

Miguel was pretty insistent that he shouldn’t judge his sensei based on those early interactions, but Demetri did and was going to continue doing so until something changed his mind. The man had pretty much bullied his best friend out of existence. 

“I thought you said he made fun of me? Why did I stay if he did that, especially if you weren’t even there anymore?”

“Right?!” Demetri threw his hands up in a dramatic ‘see?!’ gesture, glad Eli understood how ridiculous that was. “It makes no sense. I mean, I get you wanted to be able to stand up for yourself, but from what I saw that class was just this authoritarian who probably peaked in high school insulting kids and making them think they weren’t good enough as they are. He put it in your head you had to ‘flip the script’ and you, well –“ Demetri gestured to Eli’s reflection in the mirror. “You’ve changed a lot.” 

Which was when he noticed how uneasy his ranting had Eli looking. He probably sounded pretty angry, and that wasn’t fair. This Eli hadn’t made Hawk’s frustrating choices. 

“Sorry… I just wish we would have stuck together.” Demetri forced his voice back down to a more even level and stepped over to pat Eli’s arm. 

It didn’t help. If anything he looked more upset. 

“Dem… are we still best friends?” Eli’s blue eyes looked slightly watery as they tilted up to meet his. It felt like someone was trying to pry out his heart with a crowbar. “Just, it’s apparently normal for me to chase you now, and Sam LaRusso seemed like she thought she was protecting you. From me.”

“Hey, of course, always.” Demetri lied without a second’s hesitation, grabbing Eli’s fidgeting hands in his. Because it wasn’t a lie, really, was it? It felt true enough to him. Eli would always be his best friend, he just hadn’t been Eli for a while. Now he was again. “We’re closer than ever.” 

“We’re in different karate dojos, that’s all.” That was a massive understatement, sure, but it was also the simplest way of stating the truth. There was no reason to tell Eli how bad Hawk had gotten. It was enough for him to know they weren’t on the same karate team. Demetri didn’t want to talk about them being enemies now that that period was over, and knowing would only make Eli upset over things he hadn’t even done. 

“So I’m still in a dojo with our friend Miguel?”

“Well… Things got kind of complicated. So no. Um…” Demetri was saved from further explanations by the bell signaling the end of lunch. “Listen, it’s better you avoid Kyler and his friends for now.” 

“I always avoid Kyler.”

“You should, but sadly you don’t. You actually hang out with him now.” 

Eli scrunched up his nose like he couldn’t quite believe that, and honestly Demetri hardly could either. 

“Maybe go home sick for the afternoon? We have the day off school tomorrow so I’ll come over first thing.”

Eli frowned and Demetri realized that it was because he didn’t like skipping school. Because Eli still cared about things like skipping school. Demetri grinned and squeezed his hands – which he just now realized he was still holding. “Don’t worry, things will only get better from here.” 

-

After declaring he was from the future Hawk spent the rest of the afternoon trying to prove it. It hadn’t gone well. It wasn’t like he remembered anything super specific about that particular afternoon he could ‘predict’. The best he could come up with was predicting plot points in Dark Matter. They’d binged the whole series that summer and when he asked Demetri confirmed they’d gotten to the end of season 2 and were going to start season 3 soon. When they finished the movie they put the show on and Hawk got to predicting.

Every time he told him what was about to happen, however, Demetri just thought he was good at predicting tv. Hawk tried not to feel pleased at being called clever; if Demetri actually believed he was from the future he would have been so mad about all the spoilers. 

Demetri never outright said he didn’t believe him, but it was clear he thought the whole thing was some kind of joke and that he was just playing along. After a couple episodes Hawk decided that wasn’t going to work and tried another tactic. Maybe if he just told Demetri about the actual future in enough detail he’d at least start believing Hawk wasn’t joking around.

“When school starts again we’ll meet a new friend named Miguel. After a while we’ll go with him to the dojo where he learns karate.” 

“Is Miguel also from the future?”

“What?”

“Is he like a time traveling ninja who came back in time to train an army that could fight some kind of ultimate evil that doesn’t exist yet?” Demetri laughed as he spoke, like they were ten years old again and brainstorming the plot of a make-believe game. 

“You aren’t taking this seriously.” 

“And then when the time came we still weren’t ready, so Miguel the Time Traveling Ninja sent you even farther into the past –“ 

“Shut up!” Demetri looked hurt for a moment, and then insulted and like he was re-thinking how easily he’d let his earlier odd behaviour go. “S –“

Hawk had intended to say ‘sorry’, but the word wouldn’t come. It was strange because he knew it was what he was supposed to say, and he was trying not to become Demetri’s enemy again so he really was sorry for snapping. But it wouldn’t come. It just felt too wrong, and he didn’t even know why.

“Listen, I know this sounds unbelievable, I’m not even sure I believe it. I still think there’s a chance I’m dreaming. But I mean what I’m – ouch!”

That smarmy asshole pinched him. Hard. 

“I got petty revenge and now you know for sure you’re not dreaming. It was a win-win.” Demetri answered the question Hawk hadn’t actually asked. “Why are you being such a jerk today?”

Demetri being angry with him was nothing new for Hawk, but the specific type of irritation on his face was something he actually hadn’t seen in a while. He was expecting answers. He was mad but he was waiting for Hawk to explain himself so they could get past it. In his time, Demetri had stopped expecting anything but more aggression from him a while ago. He didn’t try to talk to him anymore, didn’t search his face for answers. He’d held out for a long time, but he’d written him off now. He’d be an idiot not to. 

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” Hawk answered completely honestly. He couldn’t stand the thought that Demetri might write him off again. “I’m…scared.” 

The feral creature in the pit of his stomach coiled tighter, a retaliation against the offense of admitting weakness. He hadn’t meant to say that last part. He hadn’t even been thinking that last part. He was on alert because it was always smart to be on alert. If anything, it was weak to ever not be at least a little on edge. That didn’t mean he was scared. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t weak. He was off-balance, sure, but that was understandable. He’d find his footing. Fear did not exist. 

Demetri’s anger faded with the admission of fear, though, and now he just looked worried. Which made Hawk angry. Really angry. And as with his inability to say ‘sorry’, he didn’t understand why. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever just been angry without knowing the specific reason, that had actually become pretty common for him, but this wave of it caught him off guard. The obvious answer was that he didn’t want Demetri’s pity, but …that wasn’t it. He got up and walked to the other end of the room where Demetri’s family kept a bunch of cardboard storage boxes. 

This was liquid anger. Hawk was familiar enough with being angry that he had labels for the different types. Some anger was like fire – it took over in a burst and stayed in control until it had burned itself out. It could even be a fun ride. Liquid anger was different; there was no ride. It swelled like a tide and then he was just immersed in it. It lingered all around him weighing him down and trying to pull his brain places he didn’t want it going in its current. It was useless. He’d been trying to train himself to use it as fuel and burn it off the same as anger that burned hotter, but so far that hadn’t worked and there was no target here to try again on except Demetri. He wasn’t going to waste his second chance like that. He’d just have to wait for the tide to go down again.

There was a heavy sigh from the sofa and then Demetri was standing a step behind him. 

“Can I hold you?” Demetri’s voice was uncharacteristically small.

“That’s not a good idea right now.” The current tried to pull him towards a ‘yes’, but it really wasn’t a good idea. He’d lash out, or he’d end up feeling pathetic… No, the current wasn’t pulling him towards ‘yes’, it was pulling him towards wishing the answer could be yes. The Eli that should exist in this time would have hated being a burden, but he might still have said yes and let Demetri comfort him while he spilled his guts about what was wrong. But Hawk wasn’t him anymore and he didn't even know what was wrong. 

They stood in silence until the tide receded.

“Do you want to order a pizza and watch more Dark Matter?” Hawk asked once he felt able to. He felt ridiculous saying it, but he wasn’t sure what else to say. 

“I’m with you, you know? Through anything.” Hawk knew that wasn’t true, but when he looked back at Demetri he almost believed it anyways. “If you’ll let me be.”

“I need you to take this seriously. We have to start training.” 

“Okay. After camp tomorrow. We’ll go out and… jog? Punch things? You’re in charge of figuring out what ‘training’ means.” Demetri still didn't believe him about the future or understand what was going on, but he'd still go along with it if that's what 'Eli' needed.

“Thank you.” Demetri smiled and Hawk didn’t even care how soft his voice had sounded.

“You’re also in charge of paying for the pizza. You definitely owe me a pizza after the locker shoving incident.” 

Hawk stayed over at Demetri’s that night. He didn’t intend to fall back into old habits, but at some point he got sleepy and found himself resting with his head on his friend’s shoulder. 

“There you are.” Demetri whispered, and Hawk realized it must have been a scary day for him too. His best friend was acting like a whole different person. Now, though, Demetri was winding an arm around his waist to pull him a bit closer and Hawk… well, he’d already seen this whole series. He closed his eyes and let himself feel safe and comfortable, if only for now. Work started tomorrow. For now he could indulge in just a little rest. Things would get better from here on out. 

-

When Demetri got home from school he found Eli sleeping on his bed. He’d mostly ignored his phone (and his teachers and his friends) all afternoon because his mind was buzzing with the events of that lunch hour, but when he checked it now he had a text from Eli saying his room ‘felt weird’ and he hoped it was okay if he came over and used the key in the fake rock.

They weren’t supposed to meet up until tomorrow. He’d wanted the night to reflect on what to tell him. He’d decided earlier that he didn’t need to tell him about things like Hawk breaking his arm or Demetri revealing his secrets at Moon’s party. Those things were irrelevant to where they were now. They hadn’t even happened for Eli, and Demetri wished they hadn’t happened for him, so why not just leave them in the past?

He’d realized that he wouldn’t be Eli’s only source of information forever, though. Someone would mention something to him and he’d be hurt. Maybe Demetri needed to find a way to talk to him about these things. Maybe it would even be good for Demetri to talk to him about them. That’s what he’d been thinking about before the headbutt, after all. He hadn’t been able to stop seeing Eli when he looked at Hawk and he’d wanted to talk to him about how bad things had gotten. 

What good did that do now, though? He was on the fence about it and needed some time to ponder it over. Not that he was disappointed to see Eli snuggled up with his pillow with a recent edition of Dungeon Lord open next to him, his hair down and hanging partially over his face. He must have had a shower. Demetri brushed the strands behind his ear without thinking and was gratified when the gesture made the sleeping boy smile. He supposed he had until Eli woke up to think things through.

Demetri went to sit in his desk chair and picked the spell book up from where he’d placed it on his way out that morning. He was still sketchy on the idea that his best friend had been brought back by magic, but it didn’t hurt to read a bit more about the spell. In truth, he found himself hoping it was magic because that seemed more reliable than ‘he hit his head’… Not that almost every piece of media he consumed didn’t drill in the idea that magic came with a cost. 

Actually, he’d potentially just rewound time on Hawk. He’d used a random power he developed at school to save his estranged best friend who’d started dying his hair bright colours. Did this end with a tornado destroying the valley?

Eli made a soft noise in his sleep and snuggled deeper into Demetri’s pillow. If this was Life is Strange he knew he’d choose Eli over anything. If this was a ‘magic has a price’ thing he’d pay it. 

He opened the book to the _Amissa caritate_ spell. 

_This spell provides a second chance to talk to a person who has changed towards you. When the honest and needed conversation has ended, so too will the spell._

_Think of your beloved as they were and that expression of them will be pulled from memory as well as time. The purpose of this spell is to grant both the castor and subject an opportunity for closure or clarity._

_Place your forehead to that of the subject and speak the spell to cast it. Be wary of temptation – no spell can mould the heart._

This wasn’t ‘magic has a price’, it was ‘magic is stupid’. Demetri didn’t want ‘closure’ on Eli and he didn’t need clarity. He had plenty of clarity. 

If talking to Eli about his issues with Hawk was what broke the spell then they were just never going to talk about it. Decision made. Those issues would stay in the past, and Eli would stay right here with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotten some predictions about things like what might happen after Demetri joins Cobra Kai and I want to clarify that the timeframe of this fic won't actually take us to the existence of Cobra Kai. I just don't want anyone to be disappointed ^^;; 
> 
> Also, there's a chapter count now based on my outline but it is not reliable and will probably change.
> 
> Also also, Eli is a cupcake~


	5. Too Close

Eli ran away from him. Demetri had had him back for less than a day – less than 5 hours! – and he had already messed things up.

Eli had scrambled away apologizing at a rate of 10 times per second until he was out of Demetri’s house. That was probably an exaggeration. But not by a lot.

Demetri felt awful – he hadn’t meant to embarrass him.

When Eli had woken up, Demetri had been sitting at his desk flipping through the spell book. He’d decided he should prove for sure that magic was even real and that this wasn’t just memory loss, so he was looking for a spell to try. Based on his grandma’s note he had a feeling that intentions mattered and that ‘let’s see if this works’ wouldn’t be considered the right kind of intentions, so he needed to find a spell that would do something he actually wanted to do.

“What are you reading?” Eli had asked with a yawn.

“Nothing much.” Demetri set the spell book aside and took in the sight of his sleepy friend – still all curled up and soft-looking, blinking the sleep out of his eyes – and found himself heading over to sit on the bed with him. “Were you catching up in Dungeon Lord? Where’d you get to?”

Demetri couldn’t resist running a hand through Eli’s soft hair yet again. He hadn’t even thought about it. But Eli had tensed and sat up. 

“Oh, sorry, I guess that was kind of weird –“

“Are we, um, together?” Eli had stayed close, but he wasn’t looking at Demetri while he spoke instead staring at a spot on the bedspread next to where he sat. 

“Together?”

“Like…” Eli summoned up the courage to look him in the eyes, blue eyes filled with something it would take Demetri until after Eli had run out to realize was hope. “Boyfriends?”

Demetri had frozen for a moment, his brain short circuiting. The confusion was obvious in his voice, and probably on his face, when he managed to speak. “Why would you ever think that?”

Eli’s face had turned as red as his hair as he whipped his gaze away then, but not before Demetri caught the expression of pure shame. “Sorry. It’s just, a couple days ago, for me, something happened. Or, I guess I imagined something almost happened, and that it still might, but that was stupid.”

Demetri was baffled, but he had enough clarity to know he hated the expression on his friend’s face. He tried to put a hand on his shoulder but the other boy leaned away from him. He was pretty sure he knew the event Eli was referring to, although he hadn’t really thought of it like _that_. Well, in the moment he had, sure, but he’d been half asleep. He’d never thought Eli had read anything into it. “It’s not that, I just didn’t think –“

“It is though! I keep building things up out of nothing. Like, you don’t like hugging, but you hugged me for a really long time earlier. And you’ve been touching me more than you ever have. When I asked if we were still best friends you said we were closer than ever, and held my hands, and you keep looking at me like, like… never mind! I’m sorry. Just forget it!” 

Demetri wanted to address a lot of what Eli was saying – he didn’t like hugging in general, but he liked hugging Eli and he’d said he wanted to get better at things like that even in the time Eli was from. Which was maybe also part of where he’d gotten this idea. And how was he looking at him? He didn’t take it as some kind of accusation, he just genuinely didn’t know and now he was worried he was doing something weird. He didn’t get to address any of it, though, because Eli was already out of his room. 

“Wait!” He’d tried to follow him, but Eli just kept muttering that he was sorry as he rushed out of the house. 

Now Demetri was left alone to reflect on his friend’s stricken face and whether Eli thinking they might be a couple by now was really all that random. He quickly realized it wasn’t. Pulling your friend into your lap – probably especially if the reason was so you could snuggle him all night – was the kind of thing that could send a message. At the time it had just felt right and normal and he’d _wanted to_ so he hadn’t thought much into the implications of it. But if you combined those implications with Eli suddenly fast forwarding to a year later where Demetri was doing things like holding his hands and stroking his hair… He could see where he got the idea. 

And if Eli thought they could have been dating, then it wouldn’t just be that he thought Demetri might be romantically interested in him. It must also mean that he was interested in Demetri. Eli had had a crush on him the summer before all the karate madness. 

Demetri couldn’t help but wonder if that crush had overlapped with Hawk at all. The idea of Hawk putting on this front like he was done with everything Eli by day and then pining over Demetri by night was almost intoxicating… But no, obviously not. He already knew Hawk had thrown away any feelings – friendship or otherwise – Eli had had for Demetri. 

Eli, though – Eli liked him. _Like_ liked him. When he’d asked if they were together it seemed like he’d wanted the answer to be ‘yes’. Despite still being haunted by how upset Eli had been when he left, Demetri found himself smiling and it wasn’t because of the momentary thought that he might have had one over Hawk. The idea of Eli wanting to be with him settled over his heart like his favourite childhood blanket fresh from the dryer. It wasn’t even a strange notion when he sat with it for a moment. It was wonderful.

He liked that Eli liked him. A lot. So, what should he do about that?

-

Coding camp wasn’t terrible. Lately if he found himself thinking about things like coding he’d remind himself how much of a loser he used to be and move on, but actually having to code again was maybe sort of fun. It was still a waste of time and not good for who he was trying to be, but right now he had to do it so he might as well enjoy it. 

Still, he was looking forward to training again. After camp they’d borrowed Demetri’s mom’s car and headed up to Coyote Creek. The woods seemed like an ideal place to start because there’d be nobody around to judge how out of shape they both were. They parked and walked into the forest for as long as it took Demetri to start complaining about it. 

“Okay, well, I’m sweating so that’s exercise. Walking back to the car will be double the exercise. Call it a day on the whole ‘training’ adventure?”

“We haven’t even started yet.” Hawk was also slightly out of breath from the walk – it was summer and it was up a bit of an incline – but that was why they needed to push themselves. “Come on, we’ll do some rounds of sprinting between this tree and that tree to warm up and then we’ll work on moves.” 

“I’m not sprinting out here.” 

“You said you’d go along with this.”

“And I will if we go somewhere nice and level where neither of us can trip over a root and smash our skull on a rock.” 

Hawk rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll warm up, then I’ll show you how to throw a punch.” 

Demetri found himself a stump to sit on (after checking to make sure there were no bugs on it) and watched while Hawk started his sprinting. Hawk was determined to push himself as far as he could go, just like he had been when he’d first gotten serious about Cobra Kai. Logically he knew that wouldn’t be that far anymore – he remembered what it had been like at first. He also remembered that he’d gotten better. 

He only made it a couple laps between the trees before Eli’s puny body just about gave out. 

“Take it easy! If you make yourself pass out I’ll have to carry you back to the car and bruise the weird ego you grew overnight.” Demetri snarked from his stump. It was when he whipped his head around to tell him to shut up that Hawk actually did trip over a root and tumble fairly spectacularly onto the ground. He did not smash his head on a rock. But there was a big one a few inches from his eyes when he opened them. 

“If you say ‘I told you so’ I’m going to –“ 

“Slowly peel yourself off the ground and struggle to raise one of your overworked legs high enough to kick my ass?”

Hawk sat up in the dirt and shot Demetri an unimpressed glare. Why did he want this guy on his team again?

“There are like three leaves stuck to your face.” 

Demetri was not affected by his glare.

Hawk aborted the glare in favor of wiping the leaves off his face. His face stung as he did so and he winced – he’d missed any big rocks, but some little ones or sticks or something had still scraped up his cheek. There was a bit of blood on his hand when he checked it. 

“Let me see.” Demetri was standing over him when he looked back up. A hand on Hawk’s chin attempted to turn his face, but Hawk resisted because he wasn’t some fragile little kid that needed to be fussed over. But then Demetri made a ‘tch’ noise and poked him in the (unscraped) cheek and Hawk realized he was probably going to get increasingly annoying until he let him have a look. It also wasn’t terrible feeling like someone cared. He didn’t need it but there wasn’t a rule against not hating it. So Hawk let Demetri turn his face and looked up into his eyes while he frowned over the cut. A moment later he let go of Hawk’s chin to wet a tissue with some water from his backpack and then he was cleaning his cheek and slapping on a bandaid that looked like a dalek.

To a degree, there was no harm in allowing this. Demetri already wasn’t that enthused about training for the karate war and telling him to buzz off and stop fussing might give him the excuse he needed to opt out. So he let Demetri help him up after too, but drew the line at his paranoid friend’s attempt at checking him over for other injuries. He’d just tripped, his pride had suffered more than anything else. 

“Are we done now?”

“What? No. I was warming up. Warming up is the thing you do before you train.” 

“Right, right.” Demetri sighed. Agreeing to go along with this clearly didn’t mean ‘without complaint’, but Hawk wouldn’t have expected anything else. “Okay then, you said you were going to teach me how to punch. Like this?”

Demetri balled up his hand and just kind of tossed it in front of him before letting it fall to the side. 

“No. First off, don’t fold your fingers over your thumb or you’ll end up breaking it. Like this…” Hawk took Demetri’s hand in his and arranged it into a proper fist. “See?”

“Yeah.” Hawk looked up to meet Demetri’s eyes and suddenly found himself thinking, again, of things he’d stupidly thought were possibilities the first time he’d lived this period of his life. He realized he didn’t need to be holding Demetri’s hand anymore, but Demetri wasn’t saying anything or pulling it away.

They were both still for a moment longer before the awkwardness set in. 

Hawk dropped Demetri’s hand and took a purposeful step back out of his bubble. “Anyways, that’s how you make a fist. Before you throw your punch you’ve got to get into a stance like this.”

Hawk got into a fighting stance. Demetri…sort of copied him. Hawk stepped forward intending to adjust him and promptly stepped right back because touching Demetri more seemed like a bad idea when he was trying not to have stupid thoughts. The taller boy might not be an enemy at this second but that didn’t mean it was okay to be having any of Eli’s dumb schoolgirl feelings about him. 

“Move the back foot more like this…” Hawk demonstrated instead and Demetri… got close enough, for now. 

“I’m building up force with parts of my body besides the arm. I understand the theory.” Demetri chattered as he got into position.

“Right. So hold your fists so they’re level with your temples and pull back with your opposite shoulder while you throw.” Hawk demonstrated in slow motion.

“You actually do know something about this, don’t you?”

“I told you, I’m –“

“From the future. Right. You sure this doesn’t result in Atlantis declaring war on Themyscira?” 

“Well, at least Tim Drake was never Red Robin in that timeline.” In his own time Hawk would have pretended to no longer understand the ‘Flashpoint’ reference, and both he and Demetri would have to leave that stuff behind when things started getting serious, but for now he didn’t overthink it. He just chatted back and kept punching the air.

“Point.” Demetri laughed slightly and started running the drill with him. 

Hawk was annoyed to find his knowledge of what to do didn’t mean he could do it as well as he should be able to. Maybe it was muscle memory or something – his brain knew but his body was lagging behind. Still, he was better than when he’d actually first started.

“Okay, let’s see what you can do in terms of putting force behind a punch.”

“What, do you want me to attack the trees? Neither I nor the local foliage would enjoy that.” 

“What? No. Hit my hand.” Hawk turned to Demetri and held his hands up the same as he would focus mitts if they had real equipment right now. It wasn’t ideal, but this was day 1 of training for Demetri and Hawk strongly doubted he would be able to hurt him. 

“No.” Demetri was looking at him like he had a slimy tentacle growing out of his ear. It was a much more extreme reaction than he’d gotten for ‘I’m from the future’. 

“Why not?”

“I’m not hitting you.” He said it like the whole concept was abhorrent to him, and like he expected Hawk to agree.

“You’re not going to hurt me.”

“You don’t know that. What if I miss and hit your face or something.” 

“You won’t.”

“I seriously might.” Actually, that did seem like a possibility. Hawk almost felt a millisecond of sympathy for Daniel LaRusso – getting Demetri to the point he’d been in Hawk’s time must have been a slog. “And even if it’s just your hand, that’s still hitting you. I’m not doing it.”

“You can’t be a wimp about something as basic as punching people if –“

“Not people. You.”

Oh.

“Listen, Eli, let’s just call it a day.” Demetri stepped forwards slightly and lightly grabbed Hawk’s wrists, pulling his hands down. “Maybe we can revisit this part somewhere with a punching bag or whatever safety gear they use for karate.” 

That sounded reasonable. Demetri was uncomfortable now so he shouldn’t push him. He could get a bag over the weekend they could train with. For now they could… what? Just go home? Talk about comics and finish Dark Matter and sit too close together on Demetri’s sofa? Fall right back into all their old routines? Hawk had told himself it didn’t hurt to do that for a while. That he could be ‘Eli’ in the short term to keep Demetri from getting spooked by a sudden change. 

But he wasn’t the frail, passive, boy Demetri hated the thought of hitting and if they were ever going to make progress maybe it was better Demetri realized that sooner than later. Right now, and before when he’d put that nerdy bandaid on his face, he was frowning like he was _concerned_ , like Hawk was someone he wanted to take care of, and that was… unacceptable. Hawk had enjoyed it earlier and that was unacceptable too. 

“Hit me.”

“What?”

“Worst case scenario I get a bruise or something. Just do it. Hand, face, whatever, you need to get over this weird hang up and there’s no better way.” 

“Eli, that –“

“My name is Hawk!” Hawk snarled, ripping his wrists away from Demetri’s light hold. He hadn’t intended to yell, or even to insist on being called ‘Hawk’ yet. The liquid anger had snuck up on him this time, a slow rising tide he hadn’t noticed until it was too high. 

“Since when?” Demetri was starting to sound angry. Good. Maybe that’d be the motivation he needed.

“About six months from now. Hit me.” 

“I said no.” Demetri’s voice was hard and his eyes were harder. “And I’m not going to change my mind just because you’ve lost yours. I’d never hurt you.”

“Sure you would.” Hawk smiled like switchblade in a dark ally, an expression this Demetri would never have seen on him before. He moved close to Demetri again, his expression making it clear this closeness was a threat and not familiarity. Demetri remained unthreatened, standing his ground. He had no fear of Hawk.

“Never. We don’t hurt each other.”

Hawk laughed. That was all they did. 

Demetri just stared at him for a moment, seemingly at a loss. Hawk knew he needed to say something to fix things. He could probably just apologize and say he was having a hard time. Demetri would forgive him if he apologized. He didn’t say anything. After a moment Demetri shook his head.

“I’m going to go sit in the car and scroll reddit. Don’t follow me until you’re over… whatever this is.” 

Hawk spent about an hour practicing alone.

-

“I’m sorry, Demetri.” Eli was soft and pliant underneath him, head framed by bright red hair on the pillow. “I’m so sorry.”

Eli’s voice was a warm whisper, a tone more suited to endearments than apologies. A small part of Demetri thought the dialogue didn’t match the scene, but most of him was consumed with trailing kisses up his best friend’s neck. Eli gasped and Demetri kissed him deeply. 

Then he woke up.

Demetri had gone to bed unsure about how to approach the situation with Eli, but when he woke up – a smile on his face, a pillow clutched tightly in his arms – he was pretty sure what he wanted. 

He had texted Eli the night before to say he had nothing to apologize for and he hoped it was still okay if he came by in the morning. He hadn’t texted back before Demetri had fallen asleep (again with the spell book resting on his face – he had a shortlist of spells to test now) but now when he checked his phone he saw that his friend had texted back that that was okay, plus another apology. 

Demetri arrived at the Moskowitz residence intending to tell Eli that he wasn’t imagining what was between them, that he thought they should move slow because he didn’t want to lose their friendship but that he was interested in trying. Very interested. 

But then Eli answered the door with his hair… sort of spiked up, but rather chaotically. Definitely not Hawk’s immaculate shark fin. 

“I’m trying to follow a YouTube tutorial…” Eli shuffled his feet as he explained the situation on top of his head. Demetri supposed it wasn’t a hairdo one would instinctively know how to pull off, and Hawk had started off with a lot less hair than Eli had now. 

Eli still wasn’t meeting his eyes and it probably wasn’t because he was embarrassed of his hair. 

Demetri followed him inside and to his bedroom. He hadn’t seen the room in months. It had changed a lot – Demetri could immediately see why Eli had felt ‘weird’ about it the day before. Most notably there was a giant graffiti-style snake painted on the ceiling, but there was also a Cobra Kai poster on one wall where there’d been a Doctor Who poster before. Despite that it was also still clearly the room Demetri had been visiting since kindergarten. The same crochet blanket Eli's mom had made years ago was folded on the foot of the bed, the same macaroni-art picture frame housed the same picture of the dog he’d had when they were little, and there was still a stack of board games on the desk. The bookshelf even still had fantasy titles and comics, although nothing recent. Hawk wasn’t keeping up with anything, but he hadn’t purged his collection either. 

Demetri didn’t know why that bothered him so much, but he tried to ignore it.

“Listen Eli, about yesterday –“

“It was stupid. I was stupid.”

“No! I was surprised, that’s all.”

“I know you’re trying to let me down easy, but it was really embarrassing and I’d rather not talk about it.” Eli picked his laptop (which was indeed open to a ‘How to Style a Mohawk’ video) up off the bed and put it on his desk before plopping down where it had been. 

“I’m trying to say that you’re not imagining things. There’s something here.” Demetri was aware that his entire focus should be on Eli right now while he was saying these things, but for some reason he was thinking about the books sitting next to his laptop. Three library books, two about different species of snakes and one on hawks. When Hawk wasn’t terrorizing the valley he was learning cool animal facts. Was science not ‘nerd shit’ if the animals you were studying were ‘badass’? It also looked like he was trying to become a graffiti artist, if the stencils and cans in the corner were anything to go by. Had he done the piece on his ceiling? Did he know how bad the fumes from spray-painting were for you, especially inside?

“I feel it too.” Demetri forced his focus back to Eli – and really, how could he ever focus on anything else? Eli looked so hopeful right then, so trusting. Hawk would never look at him like that. 

Over Eli's shoulder, Demetri saw that Hawk had a flyer on his bedside table for some kind of gallery event. Demetri had seen a poster for it – tattoo artists were going to be displaying their best designs blown up on canvases with photos of the actual tattoos on their recipients. It was this weekend. Hawk wasn’t going to get to go. 

Hawk wasn’t just a bad attitude and an ugly scowl on his best friend’s pretty face. He a whole person who liked snakes and ‘edgy’ art, who was in denial over his love of nerdy books, and who still slept with the old blanket Demetri had borrowed for many sleepovers. And Eli was ready right now to give Demetri everything Hawk never would. If this was really the result of the spell, and Demetri made any kind of move, then it was like he’d used magic to force Hawk into becoming… attainable. 

Demetri suddenly felt sick. Had some part of him wanted that? Getting his best friend back was amazing, but how could he ever kiss Eli knowing that two days ago Hawk wouldn’t have wanted it? He couldn’t date Eli without feeling like he was violating Hawk. 

“You do?” 

“I do, but… It’s just not a good idea. Things are crazy right now, you know?”

A small, beautiful smile, had started to bloom on Eli’s face. Demetri felt like shit for killing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Had some outline issues to work out.


End file.
